“Grease: Rockin’ Rydell Edition” surprises with its sexuality

In 1978, when “Grease” came out in the theater, I was on an anti-Travolta kick. You see, he had done “Saturday Night Fever,” and I was a “rocker,” which meant I rejected disco in all forms. So anything associated with it also was rejected, like John “Revolta.” (Also, all the movie theaters were in Waikiki, and I was too young to go down there by myself.)

As the years went on, I realized that even disco had a few good tunes, and Travolta could put on an Oscar-worthy performance, like that in “Pulp Fiction.” But I still never felt compelled to see Grease, even on video. It was always one of those movies that I’d get to one of these days.

When Paramount announced the “Rockin’ Rydell Edition,” I figured it was time to finally sit down and watch it. So, 28 years later, I watched it. The verdict: not too bad, but nothing really spectacular, in my opinion. It hardly seemed worth all the hype.

For those who haven’t seen it (and I’m sure the numbers are few) Travolta plays Danny, the leader of the leather-jacket, bad-boy T-Birds gang, who falls in love over the summer with the clean-cut Sandy (Aussie singer Olivia Newton-John, in her first role). When they go back for their senior year at Rydell High, they are startled to find out they are classmates.

Danny has a “rep” to protect, so he plays the over-sexed tough guy, and Sandy is hurt by this attitude. It doesn’t last long, though. Soon they’re going steady. Meanwhile, all of the other peccadilloes inherent to high school are there; the slutty girl Rizzo (Stockard Channing), the sidekick Kenickie (Jeff Conway); the cliques, the pep squad kids, the nerds.

The extras on this disc include a leather jacket dust cover on the outside, and some mildly interesting featurettes on the inside. “Grease’s” musical numbers are a staple of Karaoke bars, so it follows that they would offer a Karaoke option on the songs. Eleven deleted or extended scenes are included from the Paramount vaults, all in black and white.

The featurette, “The Time, The Place, The Motion: Remembering Grease” is the most informative of the extras, with interviews from the cast and filmmakers, recounting the history of the stage play and its progression into a runaway hit movie. There’s a clip from the 25th anniversary party and initial DVD release, with the cast and crew up on stage singing the top hits from the soundtrack. It seems a pity that Paramount only had one video camera to record the event; in this day of MTV, the constant pans back and forth across the stage and forward and back smack of amateurism.

What surprised me was the sexuality of the movie. Everyone knows high school is very sexualized, but this was a film set in the 1950s. There were references to unprotected sex (and its consequences), underage drinking, smoking, and other vices that I found jarring in such a lively musical. By today’s standards, this would rate a PG-13. I’m kinda surprised that it didn’t get an “R” in 1978.

It was nice to finally have a reference for all those songs that have been burned into my brain (and everyone else’s). The soundtrack spawned four hits, “Grease,” “Summer Nights,” “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” and “You’re the One that I Want.”

The movie has also produced one direct sequel, “Grease 2,” which all reviews I’ve read say to avoid at all costs. And it was recently remade by Disney under a different name, but with less sexuality, in the recent release of “High School Musical.”

Now that I’ve seen it, I’ll keep it. But I don’t feel a compulsion to watch it again anytime soon. And I think I’ll show my daughter “High School Musical,” long before I let her watch “Grease.”